Judging from the comments on the previous post, readers were interested in hearing more about my appearance with former Arizona Republic Editorial Page Editor Keven Ann Willey toward the tail end of KJZZ's Here and Now on Wednesday. It's a measure of the true grit and journalistic integrity of host Steve Goldstein that he has me on his show every year or so. I can only imagine the pushback he gets from the Kooks (so tell his bosses if you like hearing me). But, yes, there's more to be said.
Of course, good people are working hard for Arizona, from the activists behind Save Arizona and the campaign to recall the odious Russell Pearce, to grassroots leaders such as Becky Daggett in Flagstaff and Kimber Lanning in Phoenix, to hard-fighting state Sen. Kyrsten Sinema at the capitol. They are part of the Resistance. But they are losing. Arizona has become dominated by the worst kind of public and private craziness. Things have degenerated badly since Willey decamped for the Dallas Morning News in 2002 and even since I was kicked out of the state in 2007. Yes, she's in Texas, a very red state, but it's also a place with the kind of robust economy, opposition, vigorous media (e.g. Texas Monthly) and truly diverse cities (e.g. blue Austin) that are all lacking in Arizona. Dallas just opened a new 28-mile segment of its 72-mile light-rail system, just one thing that's unimaginable in Arizona. Its red-state Texas-sized braggadocio about conservative governance has run up against one of the worst state fiscal crises in America.
So with all due respect to my friend and former Palmcroft resident Keven, she doesn't know Arizona now. When Evan Mecham was governor, he was eased out of office by the business leadership because he was a national embarrassment. Now the business leadership is gone or hiding or compromised, and worse-and-dumber people than Mecham keep rising in power. Internally, at least, Arizona is rewarded for extremism. Also, as an editorial-page editor, she's paid to temporize. As a columnist, I'm paid, or not, to break china and throw down idols in the name of the truth. As for Arizona, the rocks come with the farm, so quit complaining about being badly treated by the rest of America.
Do people elsewhere run down Arizona? You bet. A quick search of national headlines in Rogue's Arizona's Continuing Crisis, or the wondrous voyage of discovery of the New York Times' new Phoenix bureau writer Marc Lacey shows the extent of the international opprobrium. As someone who loves Arizona, it pains me. It's a tough feeling, as if I must apologize when someone asks where I'm from. But this is a reality problem, not an image problem. As long as this tourist-real estate place full of boosters, liars, magical thinkers and dream walkers deny it, things will only get worse.
Arizona has worked very hard to get this ghastly reputation. And yet the defense of the status quo, even when things have deteriorated so badly, is so reflexive that it's almost incurable. We're great! Leave us alone! These things happen everywhere! Nothing to see, move along and buy a tract house with championship golf! Boycotts are awful, no matter what we do here! Any other response labels one as an enemy, a useful trope for both the white-right and the boosters; it says, "You hate Arizona." Hearing this, including the denial on the radio show, made me better understand the strange memorial service at McKale Center, where cheering and whooping overrode what should have been an event of sober reflection, consecration and a call to step back from the abyss of extremism. No, only a state so steeped in reflexive boosterism could turn it into a pep rally.
The assassination attempt of Gabrielle Giffords is the most astonishing example of this phenomenon. A Jared Loughner might have happened anywhere. Maybe. But the surprisingly successful attempt to detach him from the years of bully-boy politics, hate speech, drift into ever-greater extremism, calls to violence, armed thugs outside the president's speech in Phoenix, war on immigrants and the underclass and one of the most permissive gun atmospheres in the nation won't cut it. These are things specific to Arizona. And Loughner was not just a random madman. George Metesky, the "mad bomber" who injured 15 people with explosives planted in public places in New York in the 1940s and 1950s (and somehow we avoided a Patriot Act and Department of Homeland Security) was the classic. Angry over a workplace injury and legally insane, he struck at random. Loughner did not. He did not go out to shoot people at a Jon Kyl or Trent Franks event, or kill Jews or African Americans. He specifically focused on Giffords, who had been the target of sustained vitriol on ubiquitous talk radio, a gun sight on Sarah Palin's Web site and the recipient of repeated threats in the violence-talk Tea Party hothouse of the midterm elections.
Arizona still won't own up to this. And it doesn't matter that it might have happened in another crazy red state (McVeigh in Oklahoma, the Branch Davidians in Texas, Randy Weaver in Idaho). It happened in Arizona. And for reasons that have been allowed to dangerously percolate in the state for years.
The mindset makes it impossible for the Arizonans who could really move the state back to sanity to even conceive of a serious conversation. Mention climate change and water and they deny both. Discuss the wisdom of having built America's largest nuclear generating station, the target of repeated safety violations by an industry-captured regulatory agency, upwind of the nation's 5th largest city, and you're likely to hear something like, "Well, Seattle is near an active volcano!" "Think tanks" and media hacks defend the economic disaster, or say it will be fixed by the very policies that helped cause it. The demographic time bomb, low-wage jobs, suffering of the working poor. There'a always some sunny, defensive comeback. Oh, nevermind then.
Rarely has boosterism gotten a place less. In Atlanta, it's rabid, but also often constructive, helping build a vibrant world-class economy and preserve racial peace, even if the metro area is a traffic-clogged, planner's nightmare. Dallas, where JFK was assassinated, was ground zero of right-wing extremism in the early 1960s. Its boosterism helped it overcome that, to retain its standing as a major business center, even as the city has suffered from the "Metroplex's" appalling sprawl. Chicago is corrupt, proud and a world city. Phoenix and Arizona? What have they gotten for all the growthgasms and puffed-up sunnyside propaganda?
I tire of the defensiveness. It's like counseling an underperforming, troubled employee, or a child — I didn't do it…Susie did it…Stevie's did just as bad as me! Amy Silverman at New Times wrote about Phoenix's supposed inferiority complex a few years ago. But as events unfold, I think the situation is just the opposite for much of Arizona. It has a superiority complex. It proudly reviles education, especially real universities. Book learnin's the path to SOCIALISM! It learns everything it needs to know from Rush and the "Goldwater" Institute. "Mexicans," blacks, gays, lesbians, urbanites, environmentalists, RINOs, "liberals" — they're all the enemy. Cut taxes, cut taxes, cut taxes! America needs the leaders like Pearce, John Huppenthal, Tom Horne and Jan Brewer. SB 1070's a template for real Americans to take their country back. We're exceptional, rugged individualists in the West and the rest of y'all just don't understand. But you will! We're not ignorant, bigoted, reckless extremists, you're just elitists! And we're gonna win! Arizona has become the state version of Sarah Palin.
Here's the bottom line: Arizona must fix itself. Not change the subject. Not froth in denial. Not say, "every place has problems" or "every place changes." Or. "Quit picking on us!"
No. Look in the mirror and fix yourself.
Who kicked you out of Arizona?
Wow!
The nonsensical devotion to tax cuts and Republican stupidity are not unique to Arizona. Much of Florida is the same way. Florida elected a known thug as governor in 2010 largely because he promised tax cuts. Much of the Midwest shares the same myopia.
Additionally, there are very sound reasons to despise massive illegal immigration. Americans need jobs desperately, and employers fire Americans and replace them with immigrants (illegal and those on H-1b visas) to cut payroll costs.
The new governor of Florida plans to close state parks and fire state park workers to save money. He says he can save $6.5 million annually that way. Florida’s deficit is $3.2 billion. What a genius.
Florida millionaires voted for him in massive numbers because he promised cuts in property taxes.
The residents of the city called “The Villages” in Florida are at least as extreme as the Kooks in Arizona.
Many in Arizona are like petulant, spoiled children in running down the federal government: Quick to critize daddy while taking money hand over fist from him. The late Herb Drinkwater made a career of such as mayor of Scottsdale, where he raked in federal funds (that is, OUR money) to build the local greenbelt. At one point in the early 1980s, the Central Arizona Project acounted for $1 out of every $10 spent by the federal government when you took defense, Social Security and Medicare spending out of the equation.
The United States has massive unemployment and absolutely no jobs. Millions of Americans are begging for jobs.
In spite of that, many members of Congress have consistently voted to raise the number of worker visas issued to immigrants; to grant amnesty to illegal immigrants; and to pass the Dream Act. Every one of these laws would flood the US job market with even more job-seekers, and give employers the chance to fire even more Americans and replace them with immigrants.
How is that NOT extremist? The real extremists are the ones who don’t want to stop illegal immigration. If you are an unemployed American, you might see Gabrielle Giffords as someone who is working against your interests, because she introduced legislation to raise the H-1b visa cap (a horrible idea).
With Kyl’s retirement, the state is about to plumb new depths of reality avoidance. Montini is suggesting Russell Pearce as the favorite replacement, someone who would fasten Arizona’s seat belt ever more tightly on the Caravan of Crazy. But even if the somewhat more upscale Jeff Flake is the victor, you’re still dealing with an ideologue who caters to Arizona’s worst vanity: its supposed independence from the cold realities of a hyper-competitive nation and world.
Politics can’t answer every existential complaint we have about our dysfucntional community and its surreal detachment from honest conversations. Most of us are happy to have sunny days and fun things to do. If things go badly, we can move somewhere else. Indeed, Arizona may as well be somewhere else given our need to homogenize this state with chain retail and entertainment complexes. Arizona is not unique here or even in its political neuroses. We’re dominated by an instinct to deny, to pretend every problem has a bumper-sticker solution. We’re upside down in our houses and about to kick hundreds of thousands onto the streets without health insurance. We care more about fetuses than the neighbors we scarcely know. And the net result is a highly urbanized state without much if any idea what the future will consist of. We’re driving a freeway called nostalgia to an unknown destination and no exit.
There’s nothing inherently inconsistent with the idea that Arizona is politically ghastly and with the proposition that Arizona is not so different than many places. We’re a declining empire, and Arizona is not the only place that’s veering toward full-on crazy. That’s not a defense of Arizona. It’s a statement about how bad off we are as a country.
“If things go badly, we can move somewhere else.” – soleri
Therein lies the rub. Home sweet elsewhere.
“We’re a declining empire” – CDT
Who is “we”?
Rather than “declining”, nation state “empire” appears to have been superseded.
What, exactly, is it that is in decline (other than the quality of life for a vast majority of planet’s people, and our reserves of wisdom)?
“We’re driving a freeway called nostalgia to an unknown destination and no exit.” – soleri
Exquisite summation!
Rarely does a crowded highway of blindered and backward drivers deliver a happy destination. Perhaps, if the windshield weren’t so mud-splattered and there was vision looking forward…
“If you are an unemployed American, you might see Gabrielle Giffords as someone who is working against your interests, because she introduced legislation to raise the H-1b visa cap (a horrible idea).” – Mick
Mick, you raise an important issue. Here is an article on Giffords that discusses her support for increasing H-1B visas:
https://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9204659/Rep._Giffords_made_tech_her_top_issue
It’s a complicated issue: ‘U.S.’ diploma mills want foreign cash. ‘U.S.’ companies want inexpensive labor. ‘U.S.’ politicians want whatever it is they want.
It may well be wise to retain the best talent, but H-1B visas are being used to offshore (‘offshore’, what a verb!) . . .
https://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9208961/Top_H_1B_visa_user_of_2010_An_Indian_firm
. . . only a little after Microsoft laid off thousands of U.S. workers . . .
https://techrights.org/wiki/index.php/Microsoft_-_Layoffs
Relating this back to Arizona: I personally witnessed one of the state’s largest employers offshore numerous high-paying IT jobs to an Indian company that constantly churned Indian nationals through H-1B visas.
Another anecdote: the mother of a homeless boy I mentored was finally able to support her family by working in a Phoenix call center. A few months after she became a manager, the company shut down its AZ center and moved its operations offshore. The mother of five young children went back onto the public dole.
Short-sighted, no?
“No. Look in the mirror and fix
yourself.” – Rogue
A pair of unlikely impossibilities.
(Yet, if an impossibility can be unlikely, then anything can happen.)
The “mirror” to which Jon refers may come to be “reflections” from friends and acquaintences outside AZ who wonder (aloud) about how we lost our grip on reality. Zbig Bryzinski (sp?) reminded Jim Leherer that it is often impossible to predict the flash point. If Gov. Brewer doesn’t impede the Pearce juggernaut, I think we have one coming!
Your knowledge of other red states and why Arizona is so much worse is impressive.
The political class in Arizona has lost all rationality and responds to issues and criticism with knee jerk ultra right ideology.
Columnists and other Arizonans distance themselves from the habitually ignorant behavior of their politicians. They claim that their politicians do not represent the beliefs and values of the vast majority of Arizonans. My question is this: Why are they repeatedly re-elected if the majority of the state’s population isn’t exactly what they represent?
It’s a statement about how bad off the planet is since the infestation of humanoids. See the article on Kieran Suckling “The last Eco-Warrior” in the Men’s Journal, March volume 20 issue.
cal lash and his dog spot pedaling slowly. And.
From Ed Abbey, Abbey’s road. “But as I was saying,let others save the world for the time being.”
JMAV, there are many reasons that the re-elected Kooks do not represent Arizonans: voter turnout. Especially for these groups: Latinos (young and old), newly arrived residents (not the old retirees, but the younger crowd), Liberals in Tempe and Central Phoenix (because they are too busy shopping, clubbing, etc and think they are outnumbered), and because Americans in general don’t vote anymore.
The turnout for 2008 was a rarity. Despite huge registration drives of Latino voters for 2010, many did not follow through with voting; this is just one group that does lots of talking, but little walking…
More on the Hispanic/Latino population; I feel that I should add a bit of reality to the discussion. Though laws like SB 1070 are highly discriminatory and there is an environment that creates a Latino underclass, much of the blame (and mirror looking) must be done by this demographic.
As a member of this group I can tell you that they are not all victims. Many do not complete high school, many become pregnant at 15, and many commit crimes that their 3rd generation parents escaped (for example). There is no Sen. Pearce forcing them out of school early, impregnating the girls, and pushing them to the streets. My demographic in this regard, must do some serious soul-searching.
Here’s the gloss; Arizona is deceiving on the surface. ASU and UofA have large Latino/Hispanic enrollments and graduates. 25% of ASU students are Latino and a good percentage are at Barret, The Honors College.
Young Wisconsinites move to Phoenix and note that ASU enrolls more minorities (Latinos) than their Universities and colleges back home enroll their large black population. They then think that all is well.
As a gay man, I can also remark on how gays in Arizona (especially Phoenix), are not mistreated (on the surface again). I have been to gay prides and events in other “liberal” cities and have been victim to much hostility; Austin is the prime example of this type of duplicitous existence. I can’t recall if this year or last, there was one lonely protester at the gates of Steele Park holding a Jesus sign. He left after an hour of the even starting. Because of this environment, people are easily duped into thinking, “hey I AM ok!”
Downtown and Central Phoenix are extremely clean relative to other cities, large and small. Many of the cities communities (gay, Latino, etc) exist in this type of false sense of security and many do not vote because they are “fine.”
“If you have the facts on your side, pound the facts. If you have the law on your side, pound the law. If you have neither on your side, pound the table!” Jon you’re destroying the table. You do realize that this crazy person has been following Giffords around since 2007, right? He must be psychic knowing that Palin would be a national figure a year later and that the Arizona Immigration law would be passed a few tears later.
Ken, I think you miss the point. The fact that Loughner followed Giffords before Palin and the immigration hostility means little since his rage was building and so was the violent rhetoric. Coincidence only? Don’t be so dismissive of what’s been going on.
Let me piggyback on some of phxSUNSfan’s comments.
Low turnout is one of the chief reasons why the Kooks gained power, painstakingly taking over the Republican Party from the school boards on up. Arizona was once a competitive two-party state. Apathy by the majority and the lack of party-building by the Democrats have cost that. Jim Pederson and Janet Napolitano failed to build a competitive statewide party. That said, the in-migration has added to the “big sort” redness of Arizona, and too many Hispanics don’t vote. Phoenix never developed a robust Chicano political bloc, as did LA. And the working folks have the “What’s the Matter With Kansas” syndrome.
Central Phoenix is a bastion of diversity and tolerance, and is enriched by that. On my street in Willo, we had gays, straights, families with children, married straight couples and singles. The tragedy is an economy so single-note and weak that it has hollowed out the core.
Many Mexican-Americans are (quietly) ambivalent about illegal immigration. They have seen how it disrupted and destabilized the old barrios and sense of community. Like other taxpayers, they pay its costs but also, like Anglos, benefit from the low-wage economy in the short run.
Ken, “a few tears later”.
Well said, whether intentional or not.
A thought:
Why is it that when I am sitting in my garage up in the mountains, it’s 11 degrees outside, the wood stove is cranking out the BTU’s, AND none of this crap going on in the valley even matters. Folks, we can’t change or redirect destiny. Maybe Fife is going to be our next Senator. I can GUARANTEE you that if Jeb Bush runs for president, HE WILL BE PRESIDENT, THUS GIVING THE BUSH FAMILY THE HAT TRICK. Destiny is a Light-rail car named Desire and all us CONTRARIANS are laying on the track with our heads on the rail. It’s going to be ugly and there isn’t anything we can do to stop it. Hell, our most optomistic member is thinking of re-enlisting. God bless phxSUNSfan. He is willing to make himself a pawn of the powers that be. What does that say of our present situation. As Pat Tillman showed, there ain’t no room in the service for a thinking man.
Superiority Complex works…
And as its finest example lets talk about Tom Horne; our sui generis AG. Here is a teabagger who wasn’t even born in the country, who was banned from trading for life by the SEC, and who subscribes to a small government and local control is best philosphy.
How do you become Arizona’s top cop with those creds?
By being superior of course….
Here is cut and paste from Wiki:
“Horne defeated Felecia Rotellini in the race for Arizona Attorney General in the 2010 elections. During the race he was widely criticized for saying, “Being attorney general is a man’s job.”
Tom Horne is so superior a man, that he actually used his state powers to usurp control from a local school district. And he did this without ever once sitting in the classroom that he banned. Even though he was invited many times. Why? Because Horne is so superior he doesn’t need to sit in the class. He just knows.
I’ll leave you with two thoughts:
1) Why doesn’t Horne’s wikipedia entry mention his SEC ban?
2) If you want to read something very telling about the classes, teachers, and students Horne is practicing his evil on… I suggest this from the Tucson Weekly (our fantastic alternative paper):
https://www.tucsonweekly.com/tucson/inside-ethnic-studies/Content?oid=2365894
Will the real Tom Horn(e) stand up.
If I recall he was a killer for the Cattleman’s association and they hung him for shooting a child.
Good words azrebel. by the way dont sit in the garage at 11 degrees with the door closed and the engine to your truck running
Rate Crimes, I meant tha the United States is a declining imperial empire and suffers the political neuroses that come with that. The collapse of rationality in our politics seems to track quite nicely the same phenomenon you observed in the last days of the USSR. Andrew Bacevich, among others, has some good insight on this. I wasn’t discounting your points that the whole world may likewise be in decline, or that the consequences of American decline are not shared equitably.
CDT, I am suggesting that there are multiple political dimensions and that their boundaries are diaphanous. Empires and nation states are convenient constructs. Convenience often makes us lazy and blinds us to emerging, more cogent realities.
The is little rationality in “our politics” because few seek the ‘our’ whilst many seek the ‘mine’.
“the consequences of American decline” – CDT
When did the U.S. reach a pinnacle from which it declined? One could argue that the ‘American Empire’ has been in decline since the Whiskey Rebellion. One could also argue that ’empire’ is synonymous with ‘decline’.
Rate, I’m not understanding your splitting hairs about this “Empire” thing. If it acts like an empire, if it speaks like an empire, if it spends like an empire, then it must be an empire. My simple definition of an empire is a country/political system/group of people who send out military forces over a large area (in our case globally) in order to secure resources for use and profit in the mother country. Since our pentagon cannot even give us an accurate accounting of how many foreign US military bases exist (the estimate is between 1,500 and 3,000 bases worldwide, I would say we fit the description very well. Now, as in past empires, the cost of maintaining this military force eventually bankrupts the empire leading to internal collapse. The empires rarely get defeated from without, they are too powerful. They collapse from within. Which brings us back to the good old U S of A. We have fifty parts in a union. The parts are breaking down, thus the whole union is breaking down. You are correct that we have been in decline for a very, very long time. Empires take a long time to come apart. Sometimes hundreds of years. We just don’t notice in the same way that we don’t notice the progress or decline of a tree. When you see an oak tree starting to suffer and die, you try to save it as if it just now got sick. Actually, the tree had been dying for decades, we just aren’t equiped to see it in short human terms.
The empire is in decline. How it ends will probably be determined several generations from now.
CDT, I’m not trying to split hairs. I’m simply pointing out that “we” does not mean what I think you think it means. When asked, the majority of Americans oppose foreign intervention. Yet, someone has created and maintained an ’empire’ in our name. There is strong evidence that Lockheed Martin and Raytheon have more political clout than you and me together with a million of our fellow citizens. I am merely asking, who is the “we” behind “empire”.
Now, if we’re instead talking about an ’empire’ of consumption . . .
Azrebel, I like your metaphor about the oak tree that began to sicken decades ago and only gaining our attention. But it’s too late.
Propping up a sclerotic empire entails not only basic reality denial but convenient fictions and myths to distract the surly rubes. You could say the tone and rancor of our politics are prima facie evidence that the empire is coming apart, that there’s no longer any center left in our politics. The rubes may be easily played but their deep-seated anxiety is picking up the kind of signals animals sense before a cataclysm. Having racialized class war, Republicans sense opportunity, which is another name for breakdown.
When we look at Arizona, the collapse is literal and everywhere. There aren’t any future elections that can repair this mess. We who hang out here, or folks like Kimber Lanning and Krysten Sinema, are not going to lead some stunning counterattack. We are witnesses filing reports. When the rocks start to slide, there aren’t enough good thoughts to correct gravity.
Soleri nailed it and I think this is accurate for the planet as a whole.
to lift my depression I am going for coffee on my recumbent and then re watch Blade Runner.
Maybe we could hire a “Mechanic”